US shuns climate science meeting as UN warns ‘time is not on our side’

PARIS: US representatives are not at a key climate science meeting in China, a source told AFP on Monday, sitting out a fight over the UN’s next blockbuster assessment of global warming research.

US officials declined to comment last week on reports that America’s delegation had been pulled from the UN talks in Hangzhou.

But a source at the meeting, which opened on Monday, told AFP: “We haven’t seen anyone from a US delegation, and there hasn’t been anyone representing the US in plenary session so far.”

US President Donald Trump, who has called climate change a “scam” and made no secret of his disdain for the United Nations and climate science, has already pulled Washington out of the landmark Paris Agreement for a second time.

However, observers said the decision to withdraw scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), set up in 1988 to inform policymakers, was a new “blow”.

“Regardless of political views on climate policy, abandoning the world’s most authoritative scientific body on climate risks, impacts, and pathways will damage US research and society,” warned leading climate scientist Johan Rockstrom.

“International scientific progress is key to prosperity, equity, and resilience — for the US and all nations,” said Rockstrom, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

The meeting in Hangzhou comes on the heels of the hottest year on record and rising alarm over the pace of warming.

It will be dominated by a battle over the content and timing of the UN’s next major assessment of climate change research.

Many wealthy countries and developing nations most exposed to climate impacts want that three-part assessment — covering physical science, climate impacts and solutions for reducing greenhouse gas levels — out before 2028.

That is when countries are due to provide their next “stocktake” — an accounting of their progress in responding to climate change.

Producing the IPCC reports before the stocktake would mean countries can be guided by the most up-to-date science, these countries argue.